I’d violently disagree with Steve—Wake is his boy as much as Dave McCarty is mine, and Wake’s been plain awful this year, besides the few usual wins in Tampa; the best thing he did was volunteer to mop up in Game 3 against the Yanks and give Lowe his spot in the rotation[83]—but I’m out the door and sailing across I-84 before Steve’s e-mail reaches me. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a World Series, and I aim to get my fill.
The souvenir shops around the park don’t open until noon. At eleven-thirty, lines of eager buyers stretch far down the block. The amount of free junk people are handing out is astounding—papers, posters, buttons, stickers, pictures, temporary tattoos, Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Fans are staggering around with bags of the crap, in total material overload. When the stores open, barkers with bullhorns herd customers into switchbacked ropes—“This line only for World Series and AL Champion merchandise—this line only!”
Hanging out by the parking lot eight hours before game time, the autograph hunters are treated to an impromptu concert by Steven Tyler as he runs his sound check for tonight’s anthem. Steven doesn’t actually sing the song, he just blows an A on his harmonica and runs through an ascending series of bluesy scales, and sounds great—a cool reminder that Aerosmith started out as an electric blues band influenced by the early Stones, the Yard-birds and Muddy Waters.
After that, PA announcer Carl Beane warms his pipes, rumbling: “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome… the National League Champion, St. Louis Cardinals,” over and over, as if he might have trouble with it later. He goes through a fantastical lineup: “Batting first, number one… Carl… Beane.” A minute later, “Batting fourth, number nine… Ted… Williams,” and the crowd outside applauds. “Batting fifth, number six… Stan… Musial.”
And speaking of old-timers, rumor is that Yaz is throwing out the first pitch, a sentimental touch, and overdue, since it’s said that Yaz and the club haven’t had the best of relationships since he retired. The new owners may be trying to patch things over. We also witness—well in advance—the return of Lenny DiNardo and Adam Hyzdu, two guys who spent time with the club early in the year. It’s nice to see the Sox are giving them a taste of the big show (though, of course, the guy we really want to see is Dauber).
Two other early arrivals of note: team physician Dr. Bill Morgan and, fifteen minutes later, wearing a brace on his right leg and no shoe in the cold, Curt Schilling. Before Game 6, Dr. Morgan sutured Schill’s tendon to his skin, a procedure he practiced first on a cadaver. Rumor (again, rumor, the outsider’s substitute for information) is that he’s going to stitch him up again for tomorrow’s start in Game 2. On those few threads, our whole season may depend.
Inside, there are more banners than I’ve seen all year—a lifting of the normal ban, for TV’s sake, I expect. It’s cold, with a wind whipping in from straight center, which should give Wake’s knuckler more flutter. Even the stiff wind isn’t enough to keep David Ortiz in the park tonight. In the first, in his very first World Series at-bat, El Jefe busts out with a three-run golf shot OVER the Pesky Pole. We chase Woody Williams early, giving Wake a 7–2 lead going into the fourth.
Beside me, Steve is smiling. Kevin, the usher who comes down between innings with a camp chair to keep people off the wall, is overjoyed with how things are going. “No,” I say, glum, “just watch: Wake’ll start walking people. He always does when we give him a big lead.” And I don’t say this to jinx anything, I say it because I’ve seen Wake all year long, and that’s just what he does.
And that’s just what he does—walking four in the fourth to break a World Series record, and soon after he’s gone it’s 7–7. It’s like they used to say about Fenway when it was a launching pad: no lead is safe here.
“Man, that was ogly,” Orlando Cabrera said in a postgame interview. He paused, then added, “But we won.”
Speaking of ogly, Orlando wasn’t looking so good himself in that interview, and he seemed uncharacteristically solemn. A Woody Williams pitch hit him on the shoulder in the first inning, then bounced up into his face, leaving him with a bruised chin, a fat lip, and a temporary inability to smile—which, under ordinary circumstances, Mr. Garciaparra’s replacement does often. Pain or no pain, Cabrera must have been at least tempted to test that smile when the Red Sox finally escaped with an ogly but serviceable 11–9 win in spite of four errors (one by Bronson Arroyo—starter Tim Wakefield’s fourth-inning relief—one by Kevin Millar, and two by Manny Ramirez). Every one of those errors led to runs, leading me to wonder if any of the Red Sox players felt tempted to visit the Cardinals’ clubhouse after the game and assure them on behalf of the home team that Boston doesn’t play that way
Cabrera might have been even more tempted to test his swollen lip if informed of this statistic: in World Series history, the team drawing first blood has gone on to win the Fall Classic 60 percent of the time. Still, there’s that other 40 percent…and the fact that the Cards have yet to lose during this postseason on their home field. But—fingers crossed, now—you’ve got to like the Red Sox going into Game 2. They’re nice and loose (what could be looser than four errors and four walks issued by Red Sox pitching?), their demonic archrivals are behind them and they’re riding a nifty five-game winning streak.
Last night’s game began with a moment of silence for Victoria Snelgrove, the young woman killed by a pepper-gas ball during riot-control operations outside Fenway following Boston’s final victory over New York,and while it was both decent and brave of the current ownership to remember her (one is tempted to believe that the previous bunch of caretakers would have swept Ms. Snelgrove under the rug as fast and as far as possible), it was also a reminder of what is
There were lines of Boston police, looking like puffy Michelin Men in their riot gear, watching impassively as the happy and largely well-behaved crowd left the old green First New England Church of Baseball with the strains of “Dirty Water” still ringing in their ears and the memory of Mark Bellhorn’s game-winning, foul- pole-banging home run still vivid in their minds. To me those dark lines of armed men outside such a place of ancient and innocent pleasure are a lot harder to look at than the mark on Orlando Cabrera’s face, or his swelled lower lip.
11–9 is a crazy score for a World Series game; so is a total of 24 hits and 5 errors. But the bottom line is that we won, Father Curt takes the mound tomorrow night on home turf with his freshly restitched ankle, and that’s a beautiful thing. (A remarkable one, anyway.)
I only wish Torie Snelgrove was around to see it.
The most surprising thing to me about Game 1 was how the Faithful booed Dale Sveum during the pregame introductions. I suppose it’s a delayed (or should I say sustained?) reaction to Johnny being thrown out at home in the first inning of Game 7 of the ALCS. Whatever it is, I don’t like it.
And despite the win, I don’t like the way Kevin Millar played, leaving ten men on, making essentially two errors on the same play (double-clutching that cutoff, then throwing the ball into the dugout), and later not getting anywhere near a ball hit down the line that both Mientkiewicz and McCarty handle easily.
By contrast, the Cards’ Larry Walker took to the big stage in a big way, making two great catches in right (a Manny liner down into the corner with men on, and a windblown pop he had to run a long way and then lunge for at the last second), and hitting a double, a homer, a single and another double. This is Walker’s first World Series, after a long and brilliant career in the hinterlands of Montreal and Colorado, and it was heartening to see him show the world his A game. If Pujols, Rolen and Edmonds had done anything to help him out, we’d be down 0-1.
Mark Bellhorn, meanwhile, seems determined to enforce the curse of the ex-Cubs (that is, the team with more ex-Cubs is bound to lose the Series—the Cards have five while we only have two, Marky Mark and Billy Mueller). Before his home run off Julian Tavarez, he was 2 for 3 against him lifetime, so his success didn’t surprise me, only the magnitude of it. It was no fluke. Tavarez didn’t fool him at all. Marky Mark ripped the pitch before his Pesky Pole shot high and deep down the line in right, but foul. All he had to do was reload and straighten it out, making him one of a very rarefied club—players who’ve homered in three straight postseason games.
October 24th/World Series Game 2
